"I can't dictate methods of Palestinian struggle": Israeli boycott activist interviewedIn the long run, there would need to be a long educational process taking place here, in order to overcome the animosity between one society to another and especially in order to overcome issues relating to the brainwashed Israeli Jewish society. But at the same time that we work within our respective communities, there is an immediate short-term struggle taking place — the struggle for rights and the end of oppression — and it is this struggle that we are primarily fighting and this struggle that we are united in, the privileged and underprivileged demanding the same rights for all. This struggle is carried out from within, by different forms of resistance and mainly the popular struggle, which is few in numbers but is mostly focused on the symbolic aspect of the struggle. Every act of resistance, no matter how small, shows to the world how the oppressed people demand their inalienable rights and how these rights are being taken away from them by Israeli brutes. This struggle is about the hearts and minds of the common people abroad — and today Palestine has become the symbol for a resistance struggle. Yet the struggle is also carried out from outside Palestine/Israel and with full force. The BDS [boycott, divestment and sanctions] campaign, which is a Palestinian-led global movement demanding Palestinian rights, is the way in which every person from around the world can join the struggle. Since the EU and the US are lending full impunity to Israel in carrying out its crimes, it is left to us, the people, to demand that Israel abide by its obligations under international law and respect universally recognized human rights. Similarly to what happened in the struggle against the former case of apartheid, that in South Africa, more and more people from all over the world are taking part and taking action, echoing the same demand for the respect of Palestinian rights.Read more...

"After Zionism" puts forth debates on one-state solutionAfter Zionism: One State for Israel and Palestine is a new collection of essays edited by Antony Loewenstein and Ahmed Moor. It is important to start by saying that this is an important and timely book, a significant contribution to the literature on the one-state/two-state debate and a useful reader on the main arguments and strands of support for one-statism.Read more...

The future of Palestine's grassroots struggle: Nilin activist Saeed Amireh interviewed“They don't want to kill and massacre us as they did in 1948, the Nakba, and the Naksa,” Amireh said, referring to the dispossession of historic Palestine with the establishment of the state of Israel, and the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza following the 1967 war. “They just want to kill the source of existence for the people, so that the people leave on their own.” In Palestine, where agriculture is the main industry, that means preventing people from working their lands. Amireh added that the population of Nilin — located in Area C of the West Bank, meaning that it is under full Israeli military control — has greatly diminished as a result of Israeli colonization and oppression. The current “total inhabitants is about 5,000 of a total of 12,000 because there are 7,000 who have left the village since 1967,” emigrating to nearby towns or further afield in Germany, where the Palestinian diplomatic representative is from Nilin and a relative of Amireh. “Our village land was more than 58,000 dunums and now we have just 8,000 dunums” as a result of the five settlement colonies surrounding the village and Israel's wall and roads for settlement use only.Read more...

Israeli lies unchecked, Palestinian perspectives censored on BBC“If the Israeli embassy phones in, there's a vast disparity of power [compared] to if a Palestinian activist calls in. They take Israeli calls very seriously, and critical stories about Israel get shot down through official pressure and the fear of official pressure. These are very powerful lobbyists — people know their careers can be broken.” The result of all this is obvious bias shown against the Palestinians in the BBC's broadcasts, whether it is by the complete omission of their story, the editing of comments which dare to mention their oppression, or the constant, relentless foisting of the Israeli narrative onto the audience.Read more...

Bogus allegations of "anti-Semitism" create real climate of fear for Arab, Muslim students in USTom Pessah of Students for Justice in Palestine at UC Berkeley was concerned that the campus climate report on Jewish students has received more attention than actual human rights abuses in Palestine. “This is the main issue,” Pessah said. “Some people [think] that the way Israel is being talked about on campus is much more important than people not having access to clean water or medical supplies, or being in jail without trial for years. All of these issues we are trying to raise aren't receiving as much attention as the campus climate report.” Furthermore, Pessah added, “there's a consistent effort to divert attention from what the facts are to how people feel.” In the climate report, the authors give a lot of attention to the specific terminology used by Palestine solidarity activists to describe Israeli policy — such as apartheid, the Nakba (the forced displacement of more than 750,000 Palestinians during Israel's foundation) and ethnic cleansing. “The counter-argument, given some kind of official sanction in this report,” Pessah said, “is that you can't actually use those words, because someone's going to get upset. And I think that that's a very un-academic way of going about it — you don't need to deal with actual facts and arguments that people are making, because it might upset you. This is an aberration of the whole academic environment.” The report's authors, Pessah pointed out, initially note — correctly — that the Jewish community has a diversity of opinions about Israeli policy. But in the recommendations section toward the end, the authors “report that most Jewish students feel that their identity is related to Israel and they feel that any criticism of Israel is an attack on Israel and an attack on their identity … And suddenly, where before we had a diversity of opinion, now there's just one correct opinion, which happens to be the ADL [Anti-Defamation League] line,” Pessah added. “It's an organization with an agenda, and this agenda shows right through in the report,” he said. “They're using their image as a protector against anti-Jewish racism, which is a great cause, to bring forward this Zionist agenda, which is not consensual, and which amplifies voices of certain students above others.”Read more...